We exited 101 North at Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, which we took all the way to Woodacre. The road passed through well-manicured suburbs with relatively tasteful strip malls at first, but bit by bit the strip malls became more worn-out, and the trees and hedges became wilder and less trimmed. We drove past Safeway, the last supermarket before Woodacre, and Sir Francis Drake High School, and then we went through the little hippie town of Fairfax, and at last the road broke out into open space. Brown hills dotted with green oak trees rose up on either side as the road wound between them, and all was laid bare beneath the wide blue sky. It felt like an entirely different world from the New England we’d just come from, where one town merges right into the next, and the sky always seems to be held at bay by trees and buildings.

Just past Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Dad turned left onto Railroad Avenue, which led into Woodacre. It was barely a town—a post office and a market and that was about it. The road narrowed and lost its center stripes, curling up and around the hills. The air smelled of sunbaked wood and grass, and the wind had hushed so that we could hear the birds singing. At last we rounded the final bend, and Dad pulled up behind my grandmother’s car, an old Honda Civic, in a gravel-covered pullout at the side of the road. Just ahead of the pullout was the green-painted gate that led up to the cottage.

After Grandpa died, I thought my grandmother might move back to Berkeley, where her friends were, but she had stayed. She had adopted a dog—a black lab that she named Analemma—and told everyone she preferred the remoteness of Woodacre.

Now I climbed out of the car and followed my dad to the trunk, where we pulled out two big suitcases and two backpacks. Dad was only staying for a couple of days before flying north to the Deer Bay Writers’ Colony in Washington, where he was spending the rest of the summer. He was supposed to finish his second novel there, but it was six years late by now, so I had my doubts. As I lugged my suitcase toward the gate, the reality of my summer began to sink in. I was staying here. Here.

I unlatched the gate and clumsily shoved the suitcase through. I heard a dog start barking. Analemma.

“I’ll get that,” Dad said. “Will you take the backpacks?”

He held them out, and I took them without meeting his eyes, but I saw the expression on his face: that sad hesitance he’d worn almost continually since that day a month ago.